"There is no such crime as a crime of thought: there are only crimes of action." Clarence Darrow, 1917.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Vancouver's Olympic Village fiasco - the Globe and Mail says the City Government can't handle (or offer) the truth

Gary Mason of The Globe & Mail today fired a broadside into the drifting hulk of Vancouver Olympic Village loss projections. It's a fast read, and very informative. I urge you to invest five minutes, by jumping to the full story and then perhaps even taking advantage of the full City of Vancouver presentation, dated April 8, which the Globe & Mail makes available to us.

Mr. Mason makes pointed reference to an allegedly deceptive Power-Point presentation given to reporters by the Vancouver City Manager, Penny Ballem.

I couldn't recall much about Penny Ballem, beyond recent press coverage of Bob Rennie's efforts to help the new regime at Vancouver City Hall, salvage as much as it can from the Olympic Village development fiasco. For my money, CBC News had some of the most insightful coverage. I assumed Ms. Ballem had a Wikipedia page, and that proved to be the case. BALLEM WIKI

To judge from the tone and personal content, I assume that the creator of the Wiki page does not like Ms. Ballem. At least it was interesting to be reminded that (past tense) served on the VANOC Board of Directors. She was handpicked by the current Vancouver Mayor, for the post she currently enjoys.

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The GLOBE & MAIL offers a wonderful interactive graphics page in support of its Vancouver news coverage. For the False Creek graphic go to VANCOUVER INTERACTIVE after reading Gary Mason's article. Several of Mr. Mason's earlier stories are also archived on the GLOBE website.